


night falls slowly like a dream that won’t end

by killbot2000



Category: Dishonored
Genre: Dishonored 2, Emily struggles with being an Adult and having Feelings and so do I, Gen, Karnaca, The royal conservatory mission, violence and blood tw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-16 13:29:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18095225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killbot2000/pseuds/killbot2000
Summary: “A shade lighter than all the blood she spilt, endless and painting the streets and skies and her hands, and she was an artist just like her aunt.”





	night falls slowly like a dream that won’t end

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my drafts for like a year so I polished it up and decided to share it with what is left of the dh fandom in 2019. Not too much plot, just exploring the atmosphere of Karnaca and Emily’s character. I haven’t actually played dh2 in a hot sec so excuse any inaccuracies. As always, thanks for reading.

The mission she set herself on wavered with uncertainty. It lacked the concrete consequences she was so used to, nothing used to spiral out of control as it now tended to do.

Dunwall nobles never set their dogs on her, chasing her down blocks and blocks and blocks of infested buildings, festering from the inside with bloated corpses and ruined fortunes. They never sang to her in the night, promising futures of unquestioned power, unwavering worship, sang to her the songs she tried so hard to ignore. And they never woke her, pulling her from her bed into a cold dead world, speaking to her with cold dead words. They never told her the future, and that her decision alone was the cause of all this suffering. The nobles of Dunwall were a simplicity she only dreamed of now. 

The void opened in her dreams nightly now. Sometimes the Outsider wasn't there, sometimes only the frozen dust and wind kept her company. But other times the visions of people came, violent or calm or still. The first time it was her mother, whispering fine secrets in her ear. The second time it was the ship captain, Meagan Foster, who merely stared, arm folded across her chest. There was something she wanted so badly to ask her, but she couldn't articulate what. After that it was a weeper, from the days of her childhood. It gushed after her, blood and fluid flying from its orifices, crashing into her like a fleshy wall. 

Finally, it was Corvo, in his terrible stony prison. She awoke with tears in her eyes, the sword in her hand, extended and readied. What she was hoping to attack, she didn't know. A witch, the sea captain, or the Outsider himself, all reasonable. She slept with one eye open, even off the ship away from the gaze of Foster. There was something so sad in that gaze. She couldn't stand its look so long unbroken. 

So here she sat, Emily Kaldwin, first of her name, daughter of the late Jessamine Kaldwin, Empress Emily the Wise, teetering atop the handrailing of a balcony. The apartment it attached to was vacant, save the occasional bloodfly and the shrine. Its drapes glowed purple in the cool dampness of the rotting building, the warmth of the setting sun letting it smell sweetly of decaying wood. The sky was orange, orange alight with a deep fire that she could never hope to snuff out. A shade lighter than all the blood she spilt, endless and painting the streets and skies and her hands, and she was an artist just like her aunt. Emily the Butcher, first of her name. A fire that burned inside her belly like the finest Tyvian red. 

Oh how she missed Corvo, and the certainty of security he gave her. Everything bled and died in her hands. Her touch brought wounds that would never heal. 

She perched atop the rail, and reached out to a street lamp. From there she crossed over the road onto another balcony. Inside the apartment lain dead guardsmen. Blood colored the walls, the scent of smoke still lingered in the air. She listened to the song of a charm, calling gently to her. She cradled the tiny thing in her hands, a strange obsession with the cold void she so hated. Proof that the living world wasn't enough for her.

The street met her shoes with the swiftness of the supernatural, the gentleness of her step barely stirring the cobbles. The guards saw nothing as she passed, only the faint scent of wind blown cliffs and the spray of a frozen sea. Dunwall would have its empress no other way. 

They heard nothing but the crashing of waves when she granted them death. 

No god could deny the stillness of a living body as they realized their death. No god couldn’t see that as worship. The cessation of life for the divine, the lifeblood stopped up with cork in the heart so that beyond this world, the divine might taste it. 

The cobbles turned dark with that sweet wine, and the empress moved onto her next conquest: the witch that served under her aunt’s hand like a wolfhound given too much leash. 

Inside the conservatory, the witches were unaware of their sudden and brutal end, lungs pierced before giving them time to scream, fitting out air as if they were a steaming kettle. She covered their gaping mouths with her hand as she dropped their bodies to the ground. They made soft sounds against the tiled kitchen floors, and she left them there. For the bloodflies or rats, whichever got there first. 

The witch of the conservatory took to her severance from the void as one would take the death of a loved one, a first and last heartbreak, a death sentence. Delilah’s former lover wailed with grief over the loss of her power. Without the void she was just another lost soul, no place to go but the streets. Nothing to pray to but the certainty of the end. 

Emily left the building with the silence and bloodshed that’d brought her in. 

On the horizon, the moon rose. The heat of the day could still be felt in the stone of the city, on the sweat on her back, sticking her shirt to her skin. Warmth rose through her shoes like the city was alive, giving off the heat of life, letting rats run through its veins and disease color its skin. Nobles poisoned the water it drank. The butchered whales gave it sustenance, the people gave it patchy clothes, and when the infection came and spread, fire burnt everything but that. 

Deep within her, Emily felt the familiarity of the city. Like she already knew its streets by heart. Corvo talked seldom of where he grew up, never fondly, never for very long. It was a defiance of sort, finally being able to go out and explore what haunted her father’s mind like some backdrop that’d been painted over and over again but always seemed to stay. That paintwork was too vivid, too deep to be covered up. No matter what he did, there would always be hostility against his origins. He laid on another coat of paint as he told her he had left. Maybe this would be the last.


End file.
